Author Archive for Deborah Pearlstein

Further to the topic of how the U.S. can/should combat terrorism without, as President Obama puts it, “keeping America on a perpetual wartime footing,” Marty Lederman and Mary DeRosa have a post up at Just Security highlighting the recent U.S. operations in Somalia and Libya as examples of what that future might look like. Among its features, a preference for capture, interrogation and criminal trial in U.S. federal courts over more lethal forms of targeting. (This has indeed been the Administration’s position on how it approaches counterterrorism operations overseas for the past several years.)

Jack Goldsmith is skeptical about how much of a model captures like Al-Libi’s can be; he argues, among other things: “Capture operations in foreign countries will only be attempted when the foreign government consents (or its non-consent will not be a large political problem), and the target is high-value, and the threat of troop and civilian casualties is quite low. They will be attempted, in other words, very rarely, and thus the Article III criminal process for foreign terrorists will be used very rarely.”

On this point, I have to disagree with Jack. It was only a few months ago we were talking about, for example, the foreign capture and federal criminal prosecution of Sulayman Abu Ghaith, Osama bin Laden’s son-in-law. Then there was Ibrahim Suleiman Adnan Adam Harun, an al Qaeda operative captured in Italy and extradited to the United States last year. And Somali Ahmed Warsame the year before that. These cases were probably most unusual in that they drew any press attention at all. According to the Department of Justice, the United States has prosecuted hundreds of cases related to international terrorism since 9/11 — including 67 cases involving defendants captured abroad.
To the extent this approach can be carried out transparently and consistent with U.S. and international law – and it is certainly possible to do so – it is plainly superior to lethal targeting, indefinite (non-criminal) detention or military commission prosecution in terms of its tactical and strategic advantages for counterterrorism (retaining the ability to gather intelligence while incurring fewer costs in local public opinion) and in its ability to safeguard individual rights.

That said, the al-Libi case and others like it are not without concern. Set aside for the moment the very important questions of foreign nation consent to the conduct of such operations. (Where we undertake it without state consent, serious questions arise about compliance with international law. Since the 1990’s, part of the U.S. response to those questions has been to simply excuse the FBI from having to comply with customary international law in its snatch and grab operations overseas. Hardly an ideal solution.) Al-Libi is currently being detained, it appears, pursuant to the same statutory AUMF authority that has supported the Guantanamo detentions and many others post-2001. But most of those detainees – indeed, most “wartime” captures – are conducted without necessary contemplation of criminal prosecution. More to the point, they are conducted without the certainty of a pending criminal indictment. How long, as a matter of U.S. law, may he be held under these circumstances before being presented to a federal court? Criminal courts have been generous in tolerating substantial presentment delays – permitting lengthy interrogation without the presence of lawyers – in AUMF detention cases before the suspect is advised of his rights and questioning for purposes of gathering evidence that may be admissible in criminal trial is begun again. But the law here is not exactly crystal clear. As long as the AUMF remains on the books, the possibility of such detention remains. How long should uncounseled interrogation continue? Even assuming detainee treatment in such detention is ideal, what principles cabin its duration?

Then there’s the shelf-life of the AUMF itself. With apologies as ever for shameless self-promotion, I’ve just posted a piece on SSRN arguing that the AUMF must be construed according to IHL, that IHL under these (admittedly by-analogy) circumstances should be understood to permit detention only for “the duration of hostilities,” and that the “hostilities” authorized by that statute may soon be understood – as a matter of law application to facts – as at an end. Existence-of-war conditions are justiciable, I argue. They already matter – and are being litigated – with respect to the beginning of the conflict for purposes of charging defendants with war crimes in the military commissions. They will soon start to matter more when it comes to the important AUMF.

The recent raids in Libya and Somalia have, among other things, raises renewed questions about how the U.S. can/should carry out its counterterrorism operations without, as President Obama puts it, “keeping America on a perpetual wartime footing.” Delighted to say we’ll be taking up just that topic in an evening panel I’ll be moderating in New York next Monday. Public most welcome with an RSVP to floersheimercenter [at] gmail [dot] com.

Law at the End of War? Fighting Terrorism after Afghanistan
Monday, October 14, 2013, 6 p.m.
Cardozo Law School
55 Fifth Avenue, New York

Panelists:

Lt. Gen. David Barno (Ret.)
Senior Adviser and Senior Fellow, Center for a New American Security and Former Commander of U.S. Forces in Afghanistan

John Bellinger
Partner, Arnold & Porter LLP and Former State Department Legal Adviser

Mary DeRosa
Distinguished Visitor from Practice, Georgetown Law Center and Former Legal Adviser to the National Security Council under President Obama

Ali Soufan
CEO, The Soufan Group and
Former FBI Supervisory Special Agent

Marty has a response up over at Just Security to my earlier post on the domestic and international law questions arising after the U.S. actions in Libya and Somalia late last week. Continuing the conversation, a few replies here.

(1) Is there a statutory source of domestic authority for the operation in Somalia? Marty’s theory is that the AUMF may well suffice to authorize the attack if the subject was (in addition to being part of Shabaab) a member of Al Qaeda. I suppose it’s possible that’s what was going on here, and there’s surely more we need to know. On the other hand, that doesn’t seem to be part of the emergent leaked story. According to the Times, sourced to a senior American security official, a Navy SEAL team “exchanged gunfire with militants at the home of a senior leader of the Shabab, a Somali militant group. The raid was planned more than a week ago, officials said, after a massacre by the Shabab at a shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya.” I haven’t heard any reports suggesting the recent mall attack was the work of Al Qaeda (or even Al Qaeda-friendly Shabaab associates), but was rather a direct retaliation against Kenya for its role in intervening in the ongoing and infinitely messy Somalian civil war. Beyond the AUMF, there’s the possibility I suppose that the President was acting pursuant to existing power under, say, 50 U.S.C. 413b to undertake covert action operations. But I’m not sure even that broad definition fits what’s known of the facts here. By statute, “covert actions” are “activities” by the U.S. government “to influence political, economic, or military conditions abroad, where it is intended that the role of the U.S. Government will not be apparent or acknowledged publicly.” Among other things, given the rapidity of the “senior official” leak here, it doesn’t exactly look like the USG was especially worried about keeping its role quiet. That brings us to…

(2) Is there a constitutional source of domestic authority for the operation in Somalia? I don’t think one needs nearly as broad a theory of Article II power as Marty or Bobby Chesney seem to think would be required to justify a limited, proportional strike against the apparent perpetrators of the armed attack that injured American nationals abroad here. You need only as much authority as President Clinton claimed in the 1993 strike at Iraqi intelligence headquarters in Baghdad following the attempted assassination of former President Bush; the same degree of authority Clinton again asserted in the strikes against Afghanistan and Sudan following the embassy bombing attacks in 1998. In other words, you need a theory of presidential power that says the President has some inherent authority to respond to attacks against the U.S. or its nationals in self defense. Why more?

(3) As for the international law issues, we’ll have to wait and hope it is someday revealed whether Libya in fact consented to the U.S. capture operation in its territory. Current reports perfectly conflict on that score. If there was no consent, as Marty recognizes, the U.S. action would apparently violate UN Charter art. 2(4). But that’s not all it would violate. International human rights law – embodied in treaty and custom – prohibits, for example, kidnapping, or arrest without legal authorization. To the extent the U.S. is bound by those rules (and there’s good reason to think it is), I don’t see how the analysis of U.S. conduct under these laws are affected one way or another by what Marty suggestions – namely, Libya’s consent.

As all major news outlets have now reported, the U.S. carried out two armed raids overseas late last week: one in Tripoli that resulted in the successful capture of suspected core Al Qaeda leader Abu Anas al-Liby, and another in Somalia apparently aimed at a leader of militant Somali group Al Shabaab. Both raise complex questions of U.S. and international law. Here’s a quick first take. Bottom line: Both are probably justifiable under domestic law, but pending some facts, the Al Liby seizure may be deeply problematic under international law.

Al-Liby has been under indictment in the U.S. since 2000 for his suspected role in helping to plan the U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania back in 1998. The indictment, available here, alleges his involvement in the conspiracy (and his participation in Al Qaeda) dates as far back as 1993. The AUMF authorizes the use of force against any organization the President determines responsible for the attacks of 9/11. Core al Qaeda is that organization; al Liby seems by all accounts to have been a central part of it. Assuming the United States moves with reasonable speed to bring al Liby here to stand trial on his criminal indictment, the Supreme Court has been (remarkably but consistently) clear that trial may proceed even if the defendant was effectively kidnapped to bring him here.

On the international law side, it’s trickier. The theory that there is an ongoing non-international armed conflict between the United States and Al Qaeda has never found acceptance outside the United States. Still, the United States has a powerful argument that the attack on its embassies was an “armed attack” within the meaning of UN Charter, art. 51, triggering a U.S. right to resort to military force in self-defense. In this respect, the decision to capture al Liby (and the operation directed in an apparently quite targeted way against him) looks like a quite proportional response. This nonetheless leaves two potentially significant international law problems: (1) If the United States actually lacked Libyan consent to the operation (as Libya seems, at least publicly, to maintain), the United States violated Libyan territorial integrity in carrying out the operation, a breach of UN Charter, art. 2(4). (2) Most scholars recognize an international law requirement that responses in self defense be timely. Whether one sees this as a necessary reading of art. 51 itself (recognizing a right of self defense only until the UN Security Council has had time to act), or a function of customary international law or both, the idea is that while states are certainly permitted some reasonable amount of time to determine an appropriate response and carry it out, a one-time attack doesn’t give a state a right to respond with armed force against the attacker for the rest of geopolitical time. Perhaps under the circumstances here the extraordinary delay is reasonable – it took a long time to find al Liby, and once we did perhaps we first pursued more peaceful efforts to extradite him to the United States. Perhaps. Another set of facts it would be helpful to know. In the meantime, the general question remains: how long could the U.S. plausibly use attacks from 1998, or even 2001, to justify new “self-defense”-related uses of force?

The attack in Somalia is a tougher case domestically. Al Shabaab, born well after 9/11 as a domestic Somali insurgency of sorts, and only recently (and to an indeterminate degree) allied with whatever remains of what is now called Al Qaeda, is not nearly as obviously covered by the AUMF. Does the President have inherent authority under Article II of the Constitution to use armed force in such circumstances? The vast majority of constitutional law scholars recognize the President has at least some right to use force without congressional authorization if he is acting in national self-defense. Here, the New York Times reports the Somalia raid was planned after the attack by al Shabaab at a shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya, that killed more than 60 people two weeks ago. A handful of American nationals were injured in that attack. Of relevance here is what appears to be the emergent custom in international law to permit limited, proportional uses of force to protect a nation’s citizens under attack abroad. If one embraces the view that the President’s powers under Article II of the Constitution should be at least co-extensive with that force authorized under international law, then the President here might be on reasonable ground. The mere permissibility of a use of force under international law has never been thought to be a substitute for affirmative authority under domestic law. But imagine if the al Shabaab attack in Kenya were still underway; assuming the permission of the Kenyan government, there would seem little doubt the President would have inherent Art. II power to use force in the interest of protecting the U.S. nationals threatened in the attack. Does the brief passage of time here make a difference from this perspective, assuming the U.S. attack was the limited, one-off response it appears to be? Not clear that it does.

For these reasons, the attack on Al Shabaab may be quite a bit easier to justify under international law than is the seizure of al Liby. The issue of Somali consent remains – and it is here likewise unclear what Somalia permitted or not. But given the relative silence so far from the Somalia government, such as it is, it may be they were willing to have the U.S. there.

As Ken notes below, the draft UN Security Council Resolution regarding the disposition of Syria’s chemical weapons is now available. While it can’t be construed as authorizing the use of force against Syria to ensure compliance without further Security Council action – entirely consistent with the Council’s past practice in Iraq, Kosovo, and elsewhere with slowly escalating Security Council threats and then reality of sanctions it decides to impose – marks an obvious and large step forward in what had, until a few weeks ago, been a seemingly intractable disaster. Not that the disaster is over. Hardly. But the series of steps Syria has already taken to comply with the U.S.-Russia accords providing for the removal of chemical weapons, and the reality of any Security Council action at all given the P5’s diverse political interests in the region, is a remarkable achievement.

Beyond those Ken mentioned, another passage of the draft resolution seems worth highlighting:

Encourages Member States to provide support, including personnel, technical expertise, information, equipment, and financial and other resources and assistance, in coordination with the Director-General of the OPCW and the Secretary-General, to enable the OPCW and the United Nations to implement the elimination of the Syrian Arab Republic’s chemical weapons program, and decides to authorize Member States to acquire, control, transport, transfer and destroy chemical weapons identified by the Director-General of the OPCW, consistent with the objective of the Chemical Weapons Convention, to ensure the elimination of the Syrian Arab Republic’s chemical weapons program in the soonest and safest manner.

What does this mean? Without seeing the OPCW’s plan, it’s hard to tell exactly. But it leaves little doubt Member States (like chemical weapons disposal experts the U.S. and Russia) now have the authority to send personnel (including presumably support for their security) into Syria to “acquire, control, transport, transfer and destroy chemical weapons.” Do U.S. Army Explosive Ordinance Demolition teams count as “boots on the ground”? If they get killed, captured, or gassed in the course of their work, hard to see how not.

In about the time it took the ink to dry on Peter and Jack Goldsmith’s helpful analyses of the import of the draft Senate resolution to authorize President Obama to use force in Syria, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved it, by a close vote of 10-7. The bill now goes to the full Senate for debate and vote; Rand Paul is evidently threatening to filibuster. Then of course the House yet needs to debate and pass its version of an authorization bill. So much for the notion that the Senate is institutionally incapable of moving with dispatch.

A few points I want to add and/or emphasize on the draft AUMF, in no particular order.

(1) The Senate version is narrower than the Administration’s initial proposal principally insofar as it limits the use of force to targets in Syria. (The Administration version would’ve allowed targeting sites anywhere in the world so long as they were legitimate targets “in connection with” the use of chemical weapons in the Syrian conflict. But to be clear, it does not prohibit the use of ground troops – only “combat troops,” a description that leaves room for rescue operations, as well as training and intelligence missions of various kinds. It also imposes no restriction on the President’s existing, substantial, and apparently already-in-use power to order various U.S. assets to the region under, for example, statutory covert action authority. On the effect of the time limit contained in the draft AUMF, I agree with Jack; the statute addresses the limits of this particular statutory authorization, it does not impose any limits on what inherent presidential power may exist under Article II of the Constitution to use force all independent of congressional authority. (Recall, pretty much everyone, me included, thinks the President has at least some inherent Art. II power to use force. Large questions remain over just how much constitutional power this is. I don’t think the non-binding and hortatory “whereas” clauses at the beginning of the operative language of the AUMF do much work one way or another in shedding light in this regard.)

(2) The Senate version, like the Administration’s proposal, is unfortunately obscure about what exactly it means “weapons of mass destruction.” The definition of the term is no small matter. The Senate would authorize the President to use military force “he determines to be necessary and appropriate in a limited and tailored manner against legitimate military targets in Syria, only to respond to the use of weapons of mass destruction by the Syrian government in the conflict in Syria,” to deter Syria’s use of such weapons, and to degrade Syria’s capacity to use those weapons in the future. What are “weapons of mass destruction”? The UN definition, adopted not long after World War II and sustained through various committee structures and resolutions since, limits the category to chemical, biological, nuclear, and radiological weapons. Under some U.S. law, for example, U.S. criminal laws prohibiting the use of WMDs, the term is defined much more broadly to include pretty much any explosive device. In this context, I suspect (and hope) Congress means to limit its authorization to the UN version of WMDs. For a host of reasons, it would be helpful if it made that point clear.

(3) There is one other potentially important limit/difference between the Administration’s proposed authorization to use force and the version the Senate Foreign Relations Committee just passed. Among the Senate version’s requirements: “Before exercising the authority granted…, the President shall make available to the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President pro tempore of the Senate his determination that… the United States has used all appropriate diplomatic and other peaceful means to prevent the deployment and use of weapons of mass destruction in Syria.” This strikes me as a potentially useful requirement, that could be strengthened further if the Senate were serious. At the moment, it only requires presidential certification that he has used all “appropriate” non-force means. That leaves the President with substantial discretion. The Senate could actually require some action – including economic or aid measures – the administration has not yet taken. This would not preclude military force. But it would put another, even minor, hurdle, along the path to what is starting to feel like a bit of a dash to action.

For those still following along, an interesting array of views on the Syria situation in a conversation this afternoon on HuffPost Live, including Michael Scharf, Jules Lobel, Eric Posner, and yours truly. Would that the link went back a bit farther, you could listen in on a lively Miley Cyrus debate as well.

As an adherent of the view that the Constitution requires congressional approval before the President can use military force (other than in certain circumstances of national self defense), I think the President’s decision to seek authorization from Congress was legally required. While Marty is right that presidential practice has at times been otherwise, I don’t think that practice should be understood to alter the otherwise clear import of the Constitution in generally requiring the engagement of more than one branch of government before the United States uses force. Presidential practice past, however, has been relied on by many presidents to justify their circumvention of the requirement to go to Congress. And Congress has, often to its shame, shirked its responsibility to engage more. That President Obama did not follow this well trodden path is thus to his great credit. In this respect, I agree with the basic premise of Peter’s post: the decision was remarkable.

I don’t think I agree, however, with Peter’s expressed concern, which seems to be that because the requirement of getting congressional authorization makes it less likely the U.S. will use force “in these kinds of situations,” this is a bad development for “the global system generally.” Of course, making it hard for the U.S. government to go to war was precisely why the Constitution’s framers thought it wise to bifurcate the war-making power between the branches (as John Hart Ely, among others, eloquently demonstrated). The instinct wasn’t complicated: war is brutal and costly and should be presumed to be rarely in the national interest. But let’s set aside that history for the time being as, one might reasonably argue, the conclusion that emerged from a time in which the United States was young and weak, and in which the world was a categorically different place from the world we live in today. What are “kinds of situations” like these that Peter thinks it should be less difficult than that for the U.S. to use force? Some of the examples he cites – Reagan in Lebanon, Clinton in Somalia – don’t seem to me like great illustrations of good things coming to the global system from unilateral presidential intervention. Other examples one might recall – Reagan in Libya, Clinton in Sudan and Afghanistan – fall I think more evidently into the category of national self defense – a category of justification for unilateral presidential action I do not see as touched at all by President Obama’s decision to go to Congress here.

A better, and much more challenging, example is something like NATO intervention in Kosovo – where the humanitarian situation was horrifying, rapidly worsening, and the UN Security Council unwilling to act. There, the Clinton Administration acted without either advance congressional approval or Security Council authority – an agonizing and self-conscious decision to violate the prevailing law for the purpose of accomplishing what it concluded was a more important end: preventing an ongoing massacre. I found it a very difficult question but ultimately agreed with intervention then. Not unlike Robert Cover’s judges of the slavery era south – torn between a clear legal and professional duty to enforce a law they believed led to a morally abhorrent result – anyone who has ever contemplated civil disobedience recognizes that circumstances may arise in which the profound value of protecting and observing the rule of law comes into conflict with another value, also profound, the protection of which one might reasonably expect to be served by the law’s violation.

But for reasons I alluded to in an earlier post, it’s not at all clear to me that the proposed U.S. use of force in Syria is particularly aimed at the alleviation of human suffering. The President’s stated purposes here – focused largely on accountability for Assad’s past action and deterrence of any future use – coupled with his stated commitment to keep the use of force short and minimal, make it hard to credit the idea that such a U.S. use of force would have the effect (or has the purpose) of ending the humanitarian disaster there (now underway for 2+ years). On the contrary, a limited use of force may provoke retaliation against Syrians or other countries in the region; Assad seemingly has no compunction about using any means at his disposal to preserve power. At the other end of the spectrum – if U.S. intervention causes the regime to collapse, it’s hard to see how we don’t face a greater danger of the dispersal of chemical weapons in the regime’s control, as warring factions fight for power in post-Assad Syria. If we could just destroy the weapons themselves, that might be one thing. But blowing up chemical weapons of course risks a far greater disaster than the one already apparent on the ground. One could go on.

For now, the point is twofold: (1) There’ve been plenty of past U.S. interventions on unilateral presidential authority that have not gone well, for the United States or the global system. (2) There are plenty of reasons to fear this is one of those instances that also will not go well – such that it makes it at a minimum worth debating in a full and democratic way (i.e. with Congress), whether or not force in Syria is the right next step to take.

Good thing nothing much happened while I was away on summer vacation… So as I wrote here last spring, there’s no clear basis under international law for a U.S. use of force in Syria – no UN Security Council resolution, and no apparent claim at this stage that the United States is acting in self-defense. The only theory of legality in play seems to be the one put forward by the British government, right before Parliament voted to reject the use of force in Syria. Namely, that force may be justified as part of an emergent customary norm permitting humanitarian intervention (see, e.g., NATO intervention in Kosovo).

The statement from the UK Prime Minister’s Office says a state may take “exceptional measures in order to alleviate the scale of the overwhelming humanitarian catastrophe in Syria by deterring and disrupting the further use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime. Such a legal basis is available, under the doctrine of humanitarian intervention, provided” a set of conditions hold. Those conditions: (1) “convincing evidence, generally accepted by the international community as a whole, of extreme humanitarian distress on a large scale, requiring immediate and urgent relief;” (2) it is “objectively clear that there is no practicable alternative to the use of force if lives are to be saved;” (3) the force used is “necessary and proportionate to the aim of relief of humanitarian need…”

ICRC and ASIL’s Lieber Society on the Law of Armed Conflict are hosting what looks to be a great event celebrating the 150th anniversary of the ICRC and the Lieber Code, Tuesday, July 23, 2013, 3:00 p.m. at the American Red Cross historical building, 430 17th Street NW, Washington DC. The event features John Fabian Witt, author of the terrific IHL history Lincoln’s Code, and Brigadier General Tom Ayers, Assistant Judge Advocate General, U.S. Army, talking about the progression of the law of war over the past 150 years. Jennifer Daskal will moderate the panel discussion of the progression of the law of war over the past 150 years of the ICRC’s existence. RSVP: icrcevents [at] gmail [dot] com.

There is now a set of important new documents regarding its targeted killing operations: (1) a letter from U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to members of Congress describing the decision to target U.S. citizen Anwar al-Aulaqi; (2) a “fact sheet” on procedures for the use of force outside areas of “active hostilities”; and (3) the transcript from the President’s speech to the National Defense University. What can we glean from them about the legality of U.S. drone operations, as opposed to what we learned from the leaked DOJ White Paper some months back? I’m still sorting it out, but for now, here’s one: Whether or not you believe the United States is in a legally recognizable transnational non-international armed conflict with Al Qaeda – a view the United States embraces but the ICRC and most U.S. allies reject – the standards announced in these documents appear intended to keep U.S. targeting operations in line with the international law of self defense.(more…)

Far too much to say for one blog post, so I’ll start with two things I liked about the speech. First, bravo on the President for giving it. Would that he had done it years ago. Indeed, having heard it, it is even more of a puzzle why it took as long as it did. Still, he undoubtedly helped himself with Congress and the public in defending his use-of-force policies, and the debate moving forward will be, at the least, somewhat better informed. Second, big picture strategy. Obama urged the need for a comprehensive counter-terrorism strategy going forward, returning repeatedly to the idea that the U.S. war with “Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated forces” must end. Some examples from the speech strung together:

“From the Civil War, to our struggle against fascism, and through the long, twilight struggle of the Cold War, battlefields have changed, and technology has evolved. But our commitment to Constitutional principles has weathered every war, and every war has come to an end…. We must define the nature and scope of this struggle, or else it will define us, mindful of James Madison’s warning that “No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.” …. [T]he use of force must be seen as part of a larger discussion about a comprehensive counter-terrorism strategy. Because for all the focus on the use of force, force alone cannot make us safe. We cannot use force everywhere that a radical ideology takes root; and in the absence of a strategy that reduces the well-spring of extremism, a perpetual war – through drones or Special Forces or troop deployments – will prove self-defeating, and alter our country in troubling ways…. All these issues remind us that the choices we make about war can impact – in sometimes unintended ways – the openness and freedom on which our way of life depends. And that is why I intend to engage Congress about the existing Authorization to Use Military Force, or AUMF, to determine how we can continue to fight terrorists without keeping America on a perpetual war-time footing….”

This view is important, strategically sound (the world can make terrorists faster than America can kill them), and consistent with U.S. and international law understandings that there is and should be a legal dividing line between law at war, and law at peace. It signals the recognition of an end game, of the need to address terrorism not as a war-emergency but as a chronic disease, potentially fatal if not managed appropriately. Especially critical among the statements of strategy in light of the series of recent hearings in Congress on the need for a revised AUMF was the President’s announced refusal to expand it:

The AUMF is now nearly twelve years old. The Afghan War is coming to an end. Core al Qaeda is a shell of its former self. Groups like AQAP must be dealt with, but in the years to come, not every collection of thugs that labels themselves al Qaeda will pose a credible threat to the United States. Unless we discipline our thinking and our actions, we may be drawn into more wars we don’t need to fight, or continue to grant Presidents unbound powers more suited for traditional armed conflicts between nation states. So I look forward to engaging Congress and the American people in efforts to refine, and ultimately repeal, the AUMF’s mandate. And I will not sign laws designed to expand this mandate further. Our systematic effort to dismantle terrorist organizations must continue. But this war, like all wars, must end. That’s what history advises. That’s what our democracy demands.

The speech leaves unclear who, other than AQAP, the Administration thinks counts as an “associated force” of Al Qaeda, so it is likewise unclear how much it matters the President’s commitment not to expand the authority further. By including AQAP under the AUMF blanket, the administration already reads its AUMF use of force authority to extend to a group that did not exist in 2001 and that itself played no role in the attacks of 9/11. Nonetheless, it was somewhat reassuring to hear the President reject an interpretation of the law that would have it extend automatically to any group calling itself Al Qaeda. And his commitment not to sign an expanded AUMF suggests he will not be proceeding simply by adding the names of new terrorist groups to the list the AUMF already covers (namely Al Qaeda, the Taliban and “associated forces”), or by removing the statutory link to the attacks of 9/11 the AUMF currently requires, or by delinking AUMF authority from the requirement (recognized by the Supreme Court) that the statute be informed by the international law of armed conflict. And in principle at least, as the President implicitly recognized, the end of the AUMF war brings legal consequences. As he put it, “we bring law of war detention to an end.”

In the meantime, even in the President’s terms, there is at the very least more than a year between now and anything like the beginning of an end (when combat troops leave Afghanistan). Look forward to a summer of ongoing conversations with Congress and the public about who we can target under the AUMF, and what process they’re due.

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